This is an entry about my new-found motivation for using Linux. I'm using a Lenovo Thinkpad X61 (7676A14) and Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10).
Early August, 2008: I tried Doc Mana's method to setup a USB Flash Drive. It worked! I could connect fine with my Linksys 300N wireless router. But that was it. I just used it about 2 times and forgot about it. The 2GB Kingston USB Flash Drive just sat inside my pocket or my bag ever since.
Until I witnessed the exchange of 2 cyber friends on a web forum I frequent.
We were having fun lambasting each other's OS (they hated Vista, I pretended to hate XP). Then I brought up Linux, since I can't bring up my first love, OS/2, anymore.
The young one was convinced by the other friend to try Ubuntu on his Dell laptop. After a few days of watching endless exchanges about desktop themes and Compiz Fusion, this young 'un kept asking me about some Gnome things I couldn't possible answer, because I haven't really accustomed myself to it. Heck, I've never really used Linux as my desktop of choice because my work involves maintaining Windows workstations. I would only encounter Linux from time to time.
So, not wanting to disappoint my young friend, I decided to fire up my Ubuntu-on-a-flash-drive. Lo and behold, the networking devices weren't working!!! :-(
I dunno what has changed after I forgot about Ubuntu-on-a-flash-drive, but even the wired LAN (eth0) wouldn't work!!!
That's it, I told myself. I'm shrinking my Vista partition to make room for Ubuntu!!!
That's when I spent almost 2 full days wrestling with Vista's Defrag and some 3rd party Defrag software. Frustration built-up because I forgot that hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys cannot be moved. Until I disabled both and backed up my files, I got 45GB free space! Yey!
Just one more thing... after using a home edition of a 3rd party partition manager to create my ubuntu partitions (Windows Disk Management just kept denying me access when I tell it to shrink my Vista partition! Aaarrgghh!), I restarted the laptop and found out that my Vista partition was damaged and couldn't boot! I didn't see it fail, actually, cuz it was lunch time and I left the laptop to eat, but when I came back for it, I saw the Thinkvantage software repairing my damaged Vista partition. Isn't IBM/Lenovo cool???
To cut to the chase, I was finally able to install Ubuntu 8.10 and everything just worked! Well, almost everything, because the fingerprint reader doesn't work and I couldn't scroll with the built-in trackpoint system...
After a bit of googling around, I found the following webpages on the fingerprint reader and the scrolling issue:
On the fingerprint reader:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinkFinger
On the scrolling issue:
http://psung.blogspot.com/2008/09/scrolling-with-thinkpads-trackpoint-in.html
The scrolling failed on me once today, but I didn't really know how and what I did to cause it to stop scrolling.
Hmmm... just now my wireless connection stopped responding. The LED was still blinking but there was nothing being transmitted. I know because conky said so.
Oh, BTW, here's my simple conky layout for now... adapted from someone else's .conkyrc
Aaarrggh... my wireless connection stopped again! I unplugged the nearest Range Expander and re-plugged it. I hope that was the only problem, and not my laptop.
Another issue I noticed was that the laptop wouldn't respond this morning when I woke up. I was watching a movie using VLC 0.9.4 in Fullscreen mode and just paused it when I felt sleepy. Nothing responded. Not even the 3-fingered salute. :-( I just turned it off with the power button (oops, that one responded to my 4-second press... hehehe) and restarted it.
Oh, yeah, about the fingerprint reader... there were 2 updates this morning, but no descriptions yet. I hope they've fixed the screensaver problem in gnome.
